I wished I didn't find this news report: GM Expects to Fall Short of Electric Vehicle Goals | TheDetroitBureau.com General Motors recently cut the price and increased the range on its Chevy Volt hoping to stimulate sales. It slashed the price on the Chevy Spark EV as well. Ideally it wants to sell the vehicles to add to the company’s bottom line, but the Detroit-based automaker is also way off track to meet its very public goal of having 500,000 vehicles on the road that use electricity in some form for propulsion by 2017. . . . “For our commitment to electrification, our forecasted outlook currently projects us, along with the broader automotive industry, falling short of expectations for 2017,” the company said in its 2014 Sustainability Report. “GM is committed to electrification and our award-winning eAssist, extended-range electric vehicle and battery electric vehicle offerings, but consumer demand for these vehicles has not kept up with our initial projections.” . . . I have no great love of GM but they do have some good engineers (although many of their brightest become former engineers.) Bob Wilson
all they have to do, is make a phone call to the ceo of government motors, and ask him why gasoline is under $3./gallon. there's an old saying, (okay, not that old) if you build it, they will come. but will they pay the price of admission?
Which is why I find comparison of diesel utility and work trucks vs hybrids and EVs so maddening. Now VW marketing has been poor which explains the recent change in the USA management. But Toyota seems to be headed in another direction too. We live in interesting times. Bob Wilson
Government Motors is trying to undo their past mistakes: destroying mass transit in L.A. , crushing the EV! - pissing off the EV! owners, lieing / cover up on ignition switches for years. And they wounder why rv sales are sluggist? Side note: just go back from Chicagoland, hybrid Camrys, Escapes, and a ton of Prius used as taxies every where you look - very impressive. Did NOT see a single Government Motors product used for taxi service. Could be Government Motors has missed the marketplace completely and marketshare has been LOST! It doesn't matter how much Government Motors crows they are committed to the ev market. THe ev market is evolving - sans Government Motors. DBCassidy
387,567. Miles one set of front disk pads one $3000. HV Battery and a two coolant pumps. And an average 42 mpg lifetime mileage? Value like that is hard to beat! No wonder can company's are seeing $$$ G M doesn't give customers any value close to that. show me a Volt or Spark with that mileage and let's compare repair costs? iPhone ?
How long do the incentives last (was there an end date)? The good news for Toyota is if the new PiP2 sells gang busters, they still have room to 200,000.
So far there is no set end date. Just the phase out for a manufacturer after they sell their 200kth plugin.
There is somewhat of a silver lining in this report. The big shortfall is not in plug-ins but on the mild hybrid side of gm or the e-Assist. This is really a short fall on start stop systems as their mild hybrids were never much more and 2-mode never sold. GM has been hiring more engineers, and I find that the volt and gen II volt have excellent engineerig. The voltec teams are also working on putting the system in other plug-in cars, and have trickled down the tech (regen braking, 2 motors system, new familiy of di ice, to the malibu hybrid that will come out soon. The spark ev was sort of thrown together, and they have a new team working on the bolt on a bigger (sonic) platform with a bigger battery. I find this all good news for engineering at gm. Will the new hybrid malibu, gen II volt, and bolt sell to newer more realistic lowered expectations? Only time will tell.I don't expect the hybrid malibu to sell well at all (less than 15,000 units a year) given the low gas prices. The bolt will have to compete with a new longer range leaf and then in 2018 a tesls model 3. The best shot gm probably has at electrification is moving voltec plug-in tech to other platforms.
The ceo of gm is now a woman, and the government has sold their stock. Those former disgraced execs have written opinion pieces on why a gas tax would be good though. Obviously people didn't want to pay for eAssist.
2012 Volt "Sparkie" has over 235,000 miles, so far. He had to change a wheel bearing. Volt Stats: Details for Volt #2012-07353 (sparkie)
There's no doubt all electric is less maintenance than ice. I read that Tesla has load tested one of their model s motors for over 1 million miles and it had no appreciable wear. With so much of the dealerships profit coming from the service bay, it's easy to understand why the dealer loves the ice. .
